Curating the Web

There's something curiously nostalgic about maintaining a blogroll these days. It's like tending a garden in a world where everyone consumes ultra-processed food delivered by algorithmic drones. While Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok feeds push content at you based on what you theoretically want to see, a blogroll is a deliberate statement about what you actually value. It's slow, quiet, and deeply personal.

I've spent the last few months revisiting my own blogroll at afranca.com.br/blogroll, and the process has made me think about how the web has changed and how, paradoxically, some of its oldest features are coming back with renewed force. The blogroll, that humble list of links to other sites and blogs, seemed like a relic until recently. Now it returns as active resistance against the centralized, algorithmic web that was sold to us as progress.

When I started working on my blogroll, I realized I was doing something more than organizing links. I was curating. Each link represents a conscious choice, a gesture of recognition to voices I genuinely want to amplify. There's no algorithm deciding what deserves to be there, no engagement metrics determining the order. It's pure human discretion, and it feels liberating in a way I didn't know I was missing.

The web of the 90s and early 2000s was built like this. You discovered new things by following the links people put on their sites. It was an organic network of peer-to-peer recommendations, where trust was built through consistency and quality. If someone had good taste in links, you came back. It was intentional discovery, not infinite scroll.

Then came social media and promised to solve discovery at scale. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all offered personalized feeds that would learn from your behavior. At first, it was magical. But gradually, the magic turned into a nightmare. The algorithms weren't just learning what you liked, they were learning what kept you hooked. Engagement became the supreme metric, optimized not by quality but by visceral reaction. Anger works. Outrage works. Morbid curiosity works.

The result is that today we spend hours consuming content that doesn't necessarily enrich our lives, but keeps us glued to the screen. It's a fundamentally exploitative relationship, where you are simultaneously consumer and product. Your data feeds the machine that feeds you content. It's a closed loop, and the only way out is to disconnect.

But disconnecting completely isn't realistic. The question isn't about abandoning the internet, but reconfiguring our relationship with it. And this is where the blogroll enters as a tool of resistance.

Maintaining a blogroll is an act of digital gardening, that practice of cultivating your online space with the same attention you'd give a physical garden. It's not about building something to impress visitors or optimize for SEO. It's about creating an environment that reflects your values, your interests, your worldview. It's slow, requires constant maintenance, and the results aren't immediate. But there's a deep satisfaction in this process.

When I add a new blog to my blogroll, I'm making a statement. I'm saying this space deserves attention, that this person's voice has value. There's no intermediary in this transaction. It's a direct connection between me and whoever visits my site, a recommendation without layers of algorithmic abstraction.

The contrast with algorithmic feeds couldn't be starker. Where the algorithm seeks to maximize screen time and engagement, the blogroll seeks quality and coherence. Where the algorithm is opaque and constantly changing, the blogroll is transparent and stable. Where the algorithm traps you in a bubble of similar content, the blogroll invites you to explore in multiple directions, following the genuine interests of real people.

Of course, the blogroll doesn't scale. It can't compete with the amount of content an algorithmic feed delivers. But that's precisely the point. The web doesn't need to be only about scale and quantity. It can also be about care and intention. It can be about finding the few voices that truly resonate with you and giving them the attention they deserve.

When I review my blogroll, sometimes I remove links. Blogs that stopped updating, projects that lost relevance, voices that changed direction. This pruning process is as important as adding new links. It's an affirmation that this space is alive, that it reflects my current interests, not a time capsule of who I was five years ago.

My blogroll will continue to evolve. The process never ends. But it's precisely in this constant maintenance that the value lies. It's an ongoing commitment to the idea that the web can be more than algorithmic feeds and engagement metrics, that it can be a space for genuine connection and intentional discovery. The blogroll is just one of those ideas, but it's a good place to start.